This invention relates to overhead washers used in automatic car washes. More particularly, it relates to overhead washers wherein depending sheets of thick, wetted, felt-like material are suspended in the path of a moving vehicle, the sheets being slit to provide strands or panels reciprocated transversely of the vehicle and supplied with hot, soapy water.
Overhead car washers of the above type are well known and commonly used in automatic car wash installations. They were first disclosed in Hanna et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,345,666, 3,403,417 and 3,517,405. The washer typically includes an overhead carriage, a support for the carriage, and a drive mechanism for moving the carriage back and forth across the path of a vehicle as the vehicle moves through the apparatus. Typically, a plurality of rectangular curtains are suspended firm the carriage into the path of the vehicle and reciprocated transversely by the carriage back and forth across the vehicle to wash it.
Heretofore, the curtains have been slit so as to provide a multiplicity of depending ribbons or strands, generally about 72 inches long and varying from about two inches to about six inches in width. The curtains are typically made of thick, flexible, felt-like material, generally about {fraction (5/16)} of an inch thick and often sold as carpet padding under the trademark xe2x80x9cOzitexe2x80x9d(copyright).
Washers utilizing these elongated, relatively narrow strands have functioned well in the past as respects the shape of ordinary passenger cars. However, with the advent of larger vehicles, such as sport utility vehicles, minivans and station wagons of various body configurations, it has been discovered that the longer strands often fall away to the sides of the vehicle. Thus, they fail adequately to cover the generally flat surfaces of the hood, top and back of the vehicle. When such a vehicle is transported through the washer by the usual car wash conveyor, the long narrow ribbons or strands often miss parts of the hood, windshield, top, and/or rear window by failing to overlap completely. Thus, the washer often leaves portions of such surfaces unwashed.
It is thus the principal object of the present invention to provide an improved overhead washer for use in car wash installations and that will serve adequately to wash the many different vehicle configurations now favored by the American driving public.
A further object of the invention is to provide an overhead washer wherein the suspended curtains are slit so as to conform to the vehicle better than those previously known, thereby to wash the hood, windshield, top and rear portions of the vehicle more satisfactorily than has been possible heretofore.
Our improved overhead washer utilizes the typical plurality of rectangular curtains that are suspended from a carriage into the path of a vehicle and reciprocated transversely across the vehicle as it moves through the car washing installation. The curtains comprise sheets of thick, substantially napless, felt-like material that are unslit at the upper edges. The curtains are slit at their lower ends to form a plurality of flexible rectangular washing panels positioned transversely of the curtain. However, the curtains are slit such that a plurality of the panels are shorter in length and greater in width than has heretofore been known. Generally, the panels are less than about 24 inches in length. The lower edges of these shorter and wider panels all lie in a straight line when the curtains are at rest.
The shorter washing panels may all be substantially equal in width, or they may be unequal in width. They may all be substantially equal in length or they may be unequal in length, but their lengths arc all less than about 24 inches